Hufnagel's early lunch break draws criticism

The classic CFL moment of the offseason has to go to Calgary Stampeders’ head coach John Hufnagel.

Rather than waiting stoically through an awards luncheon in which everyone knew that another man would be picking up the Annis Stukus Trophy — the Argos’ Scott Milanovich, predictably, was named the league’s coach of the year — Hufnagel got up and abruptly left the proceedings at the Delta Hotel in Regina.

Apparently, he had a plane to catch.

But don’t laugh. Getting in and out of Regina has to be a considered strategy for any traveler, given the size of aircraft that service the city and the infrequency of flights to the Queen City of the Prairies.

Hufnagel, a man of direct action, apparently was sticking to his personal schedule, and damn the suggestion of appearing petty to those who assumed his early departure represented the height of rudeness.

Later that afternoon, through Stampeders’ spokesman Jean Lefebvre, the CFL team undertook a form of damage control to explain Hufnagel’s action.

“I would like to start by congratulating Scott Milanovich for being named the Canadian Football League’s Coach of the Year at today’s luncheon in Regina,” Hufnagel said. “He is a very deserving winner and I’m proud to have been named a finalist along with Scott and Mike Benevides.

“I would also like to express my regret for having to leave the luncheon before the announcement was made. I fully expected Scott to be the winner and I wanted to be there to support and congratulate him, but unfortunately my travel schedule today was very tight and I had to make the difficult decision to depart before the very end. I sincerely thank the Canadian Football League and Commissioner Mark Cohon for hosting such a wonderful event and was honoured to be in attendance.”

Hufnagel, 61, is not one given to small talk, and he appears to have very little patience with some of the niceties of human interaction. He can be brutally honest, prickly, even intimidating, the Harry Truman of the CFL.

His intolerance for idle conversation and rambling talk isn’t helped by his hearing impairment, which appears to be getting worse.

During the 2012 Grey Cup coaches’ media conference in Toronto, Hufnagel drew some unintentional twittering from his audience when he appeared not to hear a question, as if he was trying to be funny or deliberately evasive. He did, in fact, handle the whole situation with grace, inner iron and remarkable eloquence, given his physical frustration and the revealing nature of his weakness.

Later, Huf fretted that he had come off looking like a disappointment to the mass interview room full of national media, when the very opposite was true. He was brave and quick-witted, even if a number of questions had to be repeated by an aide at close range.

Prior to Thursday’s coach of the year luncheon, Vicki Hall of the Calgary Herald spelled out the case for Hufnagel as coach of the year.

Actually, it was Stampeder quarterback Drew Tate, in conversation with Hall, who proposed that his coach should be the obvious winner, given the difficulties the Stampeders had to overcome to get to the big dance. A total of 72 different players wore Stampeder jerseys last season, one in which the team’s No. 1 quarterback, Tate, was injured twice.

“Look at what he was able to do given all the injuries and given all the new players,” Tate told the Herald. “I don’t know, but I think (guard Dimitri) Tsoumpas might have been the only guy who started every game on our whole team.

“It’s special what we were able to accomplish given everything that happened to us.”

The Stampeders went 14-7 overall last season, the Lions were 13-6 under Benevides, a rookie head coach, and the Argos fashioned a 12-9 record under Milanovich. But the final tally for coach of the year wasn’t close. It was Milanovich, another rookie head man, in a landslide. He was awarded 34 of the 45 first-place votes by the Football Reporters of Canada.

For the record, voting for coach of the year is done well after the season ends to create CFL media and fan interest in a fallow time of the year. The championship game is still somewhat fresh in memory, unlike the long process of getting there, resulting in a skewed but perfectly understandable bias toward the Grey Cup winner.

“I think we were the youngest team, and I think a good 40 to 60 per cent of the media people had us missing the playoffs out of the West,” Stampeder offensive co-ordinator Dave Dickenson told the Herald. “And then we lose our starting quarterback (Tate, separated shoulder) in Week 2.

“Those are all things we had to overcome . . . And we still had post-season success, and we still had the most victories in the league.”

In the end, Hufnagel wasn’t recognized for his work, only for his untimely exit from Regina.

However unappealing that appeared, it should not be outweighed by the larger qualities of a man who assumes no airs, holds to the old Gothic guidelines of football coaching, and has no fear of speaking the unfunny, unendearing, honest truth.